Why I like Japan is a bit odd.

It is quiet. I know how that sounds. Silent? It's not exactly the first thought that comes to mind when you think of Japan, especially of Tokyo. With its constant din of announcements, crowded streets, packed trains, jingles, chimes, and high school girls squealing "kawaii". But it is. Quiet.

Ride a packed rush hour train and you'll understand. Every morning I squeeze onto the same train, the 8:37, or perhaps the 8:42 if I'm late. And it is a squeeze. There really are men with white gloves politely cramming you inside. Sometimes you are compressed so hard into the train carriage that your spine pops because someone's shoulder is pushing into your back. Especially if you're tall.

But once the doors have closed and your locked into that space. It's silent. Nobody talks. Each individual unit of humanity in there exists as a bubble of isolation. Heads wrapped in the data emitted from mobile phone screens, or surrounded by the world inside game devices, manga, and books, or within the soundscape of their headphones. Everyone withdraws into themselves. But we're all connected, touching. In fact, this is probably the most intimate many of us will be with another human that day. Yet each of us is quiet. And it's peaceful. Safe. Nice. Comforting. There are no loud people talking on their phones, subjecting all around them to their inane apparently one-sided conversations. No one is telling the person next to them to just stop fucking pushing. No one is angry. No one is scared. It's fearless. It's polite. It's a little shy. It's a mood that suits me. Because I'm a fairly quiet guy. And I belong here.

Afro Samurai vs Danny Choo

I had a fun night at Danny Choo's place the other evening when he invited me over to have dinner with our mutual friend Takashi "Bob" Okazaki, and a few of his Afro Samurai colleagues. Turned out to be quite the otaku gathering, with Bob dressing up as Darth Vader and all us lads going gaga over Danny's figure collection. I'm not sure what kind of expression I was trying to pull in this photo, but you've gotta at least try and look a bit tough when you're standing next to Vader! In the photo are:

From left to right:
Fuminori Kizaki (Director of Afro Samurai)
Mrs Bob Vader, Minna (hiding in Vader's cloak!)
Danny Choo
Takashi Okazaki (Original creator of Afro Samurai) as Darth Vader
Myself
Hiroya Iijima (Afro Samurai Character Design/Animation Director)
Will Feng

You can see more pix over at dannychoo.com

Seijin no hi

Yesterday was the Seijin no hi (Coming of Age Day) holiday in Japan. It was beautiful weather and I headed out with my new mate Danny Choo to take a few pix for his blog. The plan was to get photos of him in his Storm Trooper costume with as many cute twenty-year-old girls we could grab.

The official age for adults in Japan is twenty and on this day each year, young men and women gather at their local city halls (or somewhere else if the hall is too small) to be officially welcomed into adulthood. The new grown-ups dress in their best formal wear, which for girls means beautiful kimonos, called furisode, and fluffy fur stoles. This style of kimono is distinctive because of the bright colours and long flowing sleeves that signify a girl is both an adult and single, which is a handy thing to know ;)



Danny and I visited the CC Lemon Hall in Shibuya where gaggles of giggling Shibuya gals wore a sensational mix of their normal "gyaru" hair-styles, makeup and traditional kimonos. The addition of "decora" accessories and outrageous nail fashion completed the look.

Kabukicho vs Pingmag

I recently interviewed Max Hodges of White Rabbit press about his new Tokyo Realtime: Kabukicho audio guide tour. He's a pretty crazy guy so it's kind of a shame so much of what we spoke about was "off the record"! But you can read (the rather heavily edited) version live on Pingmag now.

Arcade Mania! launch party

A quick reminder that the launch of Arcade Mania! is tomorrow night (Saturday 27th) so if any of you who happen to read this blog also happen to be in Tokyo, please come along!

Here is a link to the invitation on Kotaku

Itasha

I went to COMIKE about a month ago, along with about 500 thousand others, and it always amazes me just how massive this amateur comic market is. I've been four or five times now and the manga on offer this time were the usual piles of comic-porn. Naked manga honeys assaulted and exalted by a mass of sweaty otaku. This shocked, and to be honest kind of titillated me the first time I went, but it now seems boring, and a little sad. It never seems to change. The same drawing styles. The same themes. The same cum-covered girls fighting off the same invisible, censored, phallic-somethings. And it is still mostly young women drawing and buying this stuff—which is the one thing that does still raise my eye-brows.

But in the car park this summer were a group of otaku I hadn't seem before. Standing proudly beside their cars these guys reminded me of rev-heads back home in the 1970s, who declared their machismo by airbrushing naked-chicks on their muscle-cars. The modern Japanese approach however is to splash hot-anime-babes across the bonnet to display just how much "moe" you feel.

Now moe (a key term for otaku, and pronounced "mo-ay", like Moet champagne ), is kind of a hard concept to grasp. But basically, imagine that you seriously have the hots for a girl — probably a young teen girl — and that you are literally burning up inside to express your passion. Only, that passion is coupled with the somewhat awkward, slightly embarrassing, knowledge, that the object of your budding love is... a cartoon character. And that's moe.

These otaku say that living this kind of life is somewhat painful (no kidding), so these cars have been dubbed "Itasha". "Ita"= pain and "sha"= car. It used to mean "Italian car", but they've made it their own.

Walking around the carpark the one word I kept overhearing as people looked on at these chariots of moe was "mottainai!" (what a waste!) And seeing the Mercedes with the rather cheap looking decals stuck to it, I have to agree.

p.s: roll your mouse over the image on the right....."moe!"

Virtual Tokyo

I was searching Google Maps today to find how to get to a restaurant for a friend's birthday (can't believe he's 50!), when I noticed that Google has just launched the Street View of Tokyo. It is pretty impressive. I mean this is a damn big city! And they seem to have pretty much covered the whole place. They even have the building I live in on there, and I live in a back street of a fairly sleepy part of town.

I'm not totally sure I feel about it yet. Part of me is going "Cool! Check this street out... over here! We can totally see how to get to that restaurant!" while the rest of me is going "Um, well. Yeah, so. What about privacy and, um, the enjoyment of not actually knowing what a place looks like before you go there? You know, the joy of discovery... in the real world!"

Hopefully these two sides of me will eventually work out their differences. Until then here is where I would take any of you the first time you come visit.Walk around if you like... or save it until you can really do it.

Ichi-ban

Mum always said I should stop procrastinating, but who ever listens to their parents? Even if they are right (and she is this time), because for a very long time (it's only been 2 years!) there has been an inactive link promising a "Blog (coming soon)" on my website. So I am finally pulling my finger out and posting my first entry from Tokyo (hi mum).

I can't really promise what I will post here, or even if it will be that frequent (I procrastinate remember?) but I can tell you that I will be writing about Japan.

It's been 3 months since I arrived (or I should say came back) and it has been hectic. I am spending the year here studying Japanese and the course has been a hell of a lot more intensive than I expected. I guess that's good as I am finally starting to have a few decent conversations with people and can read things! But enough about that, this isn't to be another of those blogs complaining about how hard Kanji are (which they are!)

The main reason I want to write this blog is because there is so much written about Japan that is just plain wrong or written with a smirk on the face of the writer. I mean sure Japan is an odd place, and that is one of the reasons I love the place, but surely there has been enough stuff said about "Weird Japan". So hopefully when I have something to say it will be more informative than titilating, but not so serious that we can't have a laugh now and then!

If you are interested in what's going on in Japan right now and how modern Japanese culture is changing, then hopefully this blog will give you something new to think about from time to time. And I promise I won't procrastinate too much between posts!

See you soon.